Morning and welcome at the 2025 Half-Year Result presentation. Joining me, as usual, is Koos Jordaan, our Technical Director, who will give us a rundown and just a high-level overview of the project, the progress made on the different projects. Roelof will follow on the operational overview, and André, as usual, will give us a rundown on the financials for the period under review. I'll be back at the end with sharing with you some of the so-called levers we intend to pull, given this ever-changing world in the industry. More important, I really hope you get a sense of how we're going to set up the company for this 2030 vision of ours. If there's anything unclear in the presentation, I'm happy in the Q&A to take some more questions on that. Before we delve into the detail of the business, I might be sharing some of the highlights.
Maybe a step back just on safety. Unfortunately, again, a slight uptick in the lost-on-frequency rate of the business. Roelof, on the latest slide, will share some of the initiatives that we've embarked on to try and get it back on track. The good news for the period under review is we've now exceeded 4.3 million fatality free shifts, the last fatality being recorded in 2018. Roelof, you can probably shed some light on the detail in the latest slide. Back to the presentation, if you look at the revenue up 4.9% for the period under review, I think the important here is to take a step back and probably look at the revenue increase, although less than 5% in context of the depreciation, the utilization that was only 64%. There was a remarkable reduction of about 10% in utilization.
I think in context, if we look at the increase in revenue in a normalized year, I like to think we should have been up a double-digit on our revenue line. Again, André and Roelof will share some of the detail and why we're down on the utilization. Strong pipeline pretty much doubled our current revenue. Let me just add by saying that if you look at the world today, the commodity, the players in the game, we only cover about 45%- 50% of the total global market. I really believe some runway left here and no reason why we can't back up on the pipeline and order book. I might just add, for what it's worth, you will see a decline from the previous reporting period on the pipeline and order book.
That was a result of a project in Brazil, I think to the extent of $120 million that was moved out. Not much changes in the pipeline order book, and I think we're well positioned given where the commodities are today. The technology roadmap, I think what is important here to mention is the progress that Koos and his team made on the SVS. In the presentation later on, Koos will shed some light on that. I think it's worth noting that what the guys achieved here, drilling through rock exceeding 300 MPa, is really a significant achievement. Koos in the latest slide will deal with the detail on that. Geographic expansion of the business is something that's in good state, and diversification, geographic expansion, key to the business, fundamental to the success of the business, and no reason why that should not change.
It's one of the strategic pillars of the business, and there's going to be a focus on this going forward for all the business units as well. If we take a step back and just look at the strategy of the business, the different investments that we've made, you will see on the screen the different strategic pillars of the business, and that overlays all the divisions of the business. That covers raise boring, slim drilling, the future mechanical projects, as well as the additional investment that we've made. Well embedded in the different divisions is obviously the so-called strategic pillars of ours. If we take another step back and just for a moment zoom into the raise boring division, still about 80% or just about, call it 80% of the total earnings revenue comes from this division.
The two or three specific initiatives here or strategic initiatives, may I just add, is one still to consolidate the market. I really believe there's an opportunity to further consolidate the market, and we will, in the next couple of months, share with you some progress I hope that we're going to make in this space. The second one is obviously to geographically expand the footprint of the raise boring division. Again, something that's in good state in the past, and no reason why we should take the foot off the pedal when it comes to geographic expansion of this division. The last one, which I'm sure Roelof and Koos will touch on, is the further roll-up project process of automation and remote operations that we've embarked on some time ago, which I think is today well on track. No reason why we should change the focus on that.
The slim drilling, two things important. One, you would remember in a previous discussion we had in the presentation that we were a bit reluctant to take the slim drilling abroad. I think the reasons at the time explained was, one, we need to do something different and offer something different. We don't want to compete on price. I think today where we are, I think we're well positioned with the progress that we made with robotic rigs. I'm sure Koos has got a slide on that, the success at Makalakwena and the Desert Elephant robotic rig that's being commissioned as we speak, to now offer to the market something different. I really believe the first tier, mid-tier miners would benefit from that, not only from efficiency, but really, I think, on the safety side as well.
The last one is to maybe the approach for slim drilling not to be seen as a core drilling company, but instead of selling and making data available, which really, I think, in the geology and geologist's life, would make a huge difference. Cutting back that seven, eight, nine months decision-making time to a couple of months, and I think that goes without saying. That's going to be the focus. This company, I think, today is well positioned now to be taken abroad. That's on the slim drilling. I'm not going to steal Koos' thunder on the mechanical rock cutting and the progress made here, other than, which I need to emphasize, the progress here is going to be fundamental to the 2030 vision of this company. I need to emphasize that. Happy again to take some more detailed questions on that at the end of the presentation.
Obviously the last one is the investments that we've made in the AVA business and more important ANR. Although we had a bit of a slow start this year, company well positioned to be internationalized, work in progress, and I'm sure Roelof again will shed some light on that. Koos, without further ado, you have the breaking lights for the next part of the presentation.
Thank you, Danie. Good morning to everyone. We would like to share the following technology updates with you. I think it's safe to say that the world is changing more and faster than any time before. These various aspects, such as geopolitics and environmental issues that have an impact on our daily lives, are also creating future uncertainty. Considering these aspects, that is shaping how we deal with technology today. Those technologies, examples of them, are digital transformation, artificial intelligence, data security, how we deal with and use energy, and then also automation, etc. At Master Drilling, we're looking at these technologies and we look at how and where we should position ourselves for the future to be relevant, to be efficient, and to be sustainable. If you look at the segments of a business, it's basically covered under infrastructure, exploration, and digitization.
In the short term, we will be focusing on the following actions or technology aspects to position ourselves for the future. Considering infrastructure, where the majority of the work is being done through raise boring, in the short term, we're setting up and developing our capability in terms of shaft sinking, tunneling, reef boring, etc. There, we want to offer a solution for quicker underground access through deep climbs, through shafts. We're also working on solutions to do selective mining, providing higher grade for climbs, then also to do rig optimization and remote operation. If you look at the image on the right-hand side, it's of a reef borer operator's cab where a significant amount of operation will be done in an autonomous way in a remote manner during the operation of a machine, and that will enable safer and efficient operations.
There are various raise boring sites that are currently equipped with the same capability. Looking at exploration, we've done a significant investment and development in terms of robotics for material handling that's applicable through our core drilling projects underground and surface, and then also applicable to projects where remote operation is required in open cast mines for delineation, grade control, reverse circulation, and percussion pre-drilling. Also focusing on geophysics, the role that that could have in gathering data and quicker data and easier, and then also the impact of AI and how big data will be processed to make information quicker available to our clients for use and management and consideration.
If you look at digitization, creating an operational technology platform, then all the big data that will be collected, the processing thereof, and then looking at the integration of all of this data, being efficiency, dispatch, safety-related, management-related, and how all of this could be brought together. With the above being covered and said, Master Drilling continues to monitor technology development and trends around the globe and considering how we should position ourselves in the future. This table will provide you with an update with some of the key technology projects and developments that we're busy with. If you consider raise boring, we have done the factory acceptance testing for a Bluebot rig versus a large capacity slot boring rig that was designed and built. Also, the RD6 DC low-profile rigs is a large capacity raise boring rig.
We have manufactured three of these machines where two of them have been ready deployed to operations. We will also have a second-generation design complete for the LP100, which is a highly mobile, smaller capacity slot boring rig. We'll have it finished by the beginning of next year. Slim drilling, Danie, I've covered, but we've successfully done the surface concept validation, testing, and commissioning for the surface robotic core drilling rig. That rig is now available for further field trials. If you look at shaft sinking, we have concluded a 50 m experimental sink at the beginning of this year, meeting various key performance indicators. We're currently busy with reviewing the funding for the next phase, as well as doing design work. The next phase, you will see testing during the first half of next year.
In parallel, we're engaging with the market, looking at commercial projects that we can pursue from half-year next year onwards for this service. If you look at tunneling, we have secured a contract for the mobile tunnel borer. We're finalizing the commissioning of this resource. It will be mobilized to site in the next few weeks, and the majority of this work will take place during the next year. On non-explosive mining, we continue with the development of a reef boring technology for African Rainbow Minerals. We're doing further testing and validation work on surface in our yard towards the end of the year, and that resource will do its first field trial during the first half of next year.
If you look at digitization and ANR, there are two winch proximity systems that have now been installed with two different lines that enable a level nine CAS operation, which is very significant and a huge market potential and application potential for that, considering the risk in steps. We are also testing the communication system, which is the Xtend system. It is a robust connectivity system and tool for data transfer from the mining phase to approximately over 1 km distance, enabling about 10 Mbps data capacity. This is a robust alternative to LAN and fiber and Wi-Fi connections that in the past have proven not to be stable for the application. We are also doing testing on ANR, AI-capable camera that is mounted on a loco, and what it does is it would recognize conditions such as a ventilation door that is closed.
It would realize that there could be a potential collision, and then automatically it will retard the vehicle for this not to happen. There are various applications like this where this functionality is needed. This has also been the hardware, the software, everything being developed by Embedded IQ. We are also doing the testing of shift clearance and missing a person location with a client; this is for second verification purposes, and it will also have an impact on the time that's required for re-entry, potentially reducing three hours lost to about an hour lost. If you consider AVA, they continue to develop the dispatch algorithms as well as the development of a system for underground application and dispatch. To familiarize yourselves with these projects that we're busy with, I want to share the following visuals with you.
The image on the left is of RD6 DC low-profile raise boring rig. It's a large capacity rig. It's very mobile, and it requires a very low headroom underground. It's a very competitive tool to use in the market. If you look at the image on the right-hand side, it's an image of a Bluebot rig. This rig has been developed for larger slots and keeping in mind a remote operation and autonomous control. The image that you see is of experimental sites where we did the testing for the shaft boring system. You can see the stockpile on the left-hand side for the rock that we've excavated at the time when we took the image. The machine was below the shaft collar. We, as I said, foresee further testing on the site during the first half of next year.
The Mark II or reworked configuration of a machine would feature a larger diameter. It would feature increased flexibility, pulling the machine back and accessing the face of the shaft. It will also increase the productivity than what we validated at the beginning of the year. We are aiming at a productivity of around 5 m- 10 m per day and also to increase the availability and the reliability of the system. This will have a huge impact on plans to reach underground all bodies quicker and safer, and we are very confident on this project and very excited about its future projects. The image on the screen, that's of a mobile tunnel borer being commissioned in our yards. As I said earlier, it will be mobilized on contract during the next few weeks. You could see being tested on a concrete block.
We don't need, like conventional TBMs, a pre-launch excavation. We do it from a starter frame. It's modular to position it. We don't need a gallery with cranes to assemble it. We can basically drive it off abnormal loads and assemble the machine in a fraction of a time with a fraction of a people. This is an initiative from ourselves to provide a solution to the industry for quick and safe access to all bodies in a near horizontal orientation. To look at the next image, that is of a reef boring being tested in our yards on our artificial UG2 reef. As mentioned before, this is to perform selective mining and improve the grade of what's being mined. What is significant is that this in conjunction with a mobile tunnel borer could potentially establish a hard rock mining operation that's non-explosive and continuous.
There are huge opportunities in terms of the concept around this. This slide here is a screen grab of a report that's pulled from a single resource underground, stating events, actions, and trends over time. That's an example of what type of data can be collected. This example from ANR. ANR is currently tracking about 75,000 people underground daily. I hope this gives you an idea of how much data will be collected and how it needs to be reported, how we will need to store it, how data analytics will be used, and how AI will be used so that clients can get the benefit of efficient management of these resources. I'd just like to thank you for your attention, and I hope you are as excited about the future and the technology that we're busy developing. Thank you very much. I'll hand over to Roelof Swanepoel .
He will provide you with an operational update. Thank you.
That's right. Thank you, Koos. Good morning to everyone watching this morning. It's good to see a number of you back again this year for our results presentation. The first half of 2025 started with some great achievements that we will share with you today throughout this presentation. The year was not without some headwinds. During the operational review today, we'll cover some of those headwinds. We'll share with you how they impacted the business, and we'll talk you through what happened in these headwinds and how we overcome them. As always, a big thank you to all our employees that contributed to this set of solid operational results. Your commitment and dedication was instrumental in achieving this set of solid operational results. As always, we'll provide you with an overview on the business during our operational overview. We'll provide you some key insights into our business.
We'll first start off by looking at our safety performance, moving into our people, share with you some key insights into our people. We'll move over to the regional reviews, our port utilization, and at the end, we'll finish off with our order book and pipeline to see what the future might hold for us. Let's get started with safety. Safety remains the top priority of our leadership at Master Drilling . Our management team is committed to achieve zero harm to our employees and the environment that we operate in. As you can see from the information, our lost time injury frequency rate is higher or weaker compared to 2024. Our lost time injury frequency rate now is sitting at 1.38. We can also report that we had five lost time injuries for the first half of this year.
Management remains committed to improve our safety performance, and we will do everything we can to make sure that the working conditions, whether it's underground or on surface or in the workshops where our employees work, are safe and we can improve the safety performance. We're also committed to continue to invest into our safety programs. We have a number of behavioral safety programs running across the group, and we can report back that we're making good progress with those initiatives. We will also invest in some specific technologies around moving equipment. You probably saw some of the clips earlier in Koos's presentation using moving equipment with crawler units. Koos also briefly mentioned remote operations. This is quite a significant drive the last couple of months, making sure that we can remove people from harm's way and putting them in a safe condition to operate our equipment in remote places.
Let's move on to our people. Our people are the cornerstone of our business, and we will continue to invest into our people, specifically the development of our people into the future. If you look at our workforce numbers, our workforce was fairly stable between the two periods, just under 3,000 people employed by the group, despite we were actually able to increase our top line with around 5% for the period. Investment into training is sitting at $1.4 million, which is substantially higher compared to 2023, the same period, and we will continue to do that as we previously communicated. Something that we're really proud of is our local employment program. You know, 95% of the people that we employ within the group are local from the country and region or where we operate.
Today, we use a limited amount of expats throughout the group, and it's especially where we need to start up new operations in a new territory where we need those key experiences until we've done the key skills transfer to the local employees. Diversification, always a very important topic for the mining industry, specifically for us and our clients, and we're very proud to contribute to the gender diversity within the mining industry. Lastly, a brief comment on leadership and apprenticeship training. A lot of effort and management time went into these training programs the last year or two. We can report back that we've made good progress with our leadership training at the high and medium level of management. We can also report that the number of employees have joined our apprenticeship programs throughout the group. These are current employees and also new employees joining the Master Drilling Group.
Let's move over to our geographic revenue diversification. Our revenue for the first half of the year is sitting at $133 million. This is about 5% higher compared to 2023, the same period. Although we had a slight drop in our utilization that we will cover a bit later, we've seen a substantial increase in our RPOR to really compensate that drop in utilization. The new equipment that we added to the fleet, specifically on the raise boring side, we can report back that most of that equipment was actually deployed into active contracts and contributing quite significantly to the top line for the first half of this year. Let me take you through the different regions. Let's start off with Central and North America. We see the revenue contribution in that region dropped quite significantly.
We had limited operations up in Canada and the U.S., very slow production coming from those regions. The good news is, and the good story about the region is that, you know, that Mexican business, the team were able to turn around that business, and that business is contributing positively now to the operating margin for the group. You know, the base has been set to actually grow that business into the future. If you look at the operating margin for that region, quite a nice turnaround from about 2% to 16% for the first half of 2025. Moving down to South America, South America's revenue contribution has grown from 25% to 32% for the first six months, contributing around $43 million- $44 million for the first half of this year. Quite a substantial increase from the team there.
I think the good story about South America is that the guys were able to turn around that margin from a mere 5% in 2024 up to 18% now for the first half of this year. Some insights into the region, although the region really had a slow start, January, February, to the year, the latter part of the period, the guys were really able to turn it around in that region. We've mobilized additional machines to that region to really assist with the additional growth that we're seeing coming from that region. Operations in Peru, Brazil, solid performance, good margins coming from those businesses. In Chile, we've deployed a number of new machines and additional machines to that country to assist with the growth in that region. Once again, a solid operating margin coming from the guys in South America.
Moving down to Africa, Africa revenue contribution is slightly higher from 16% to 18%, $24 million coming from the region. We can report that we face some headwinds in Africa, specifically in West Africa, where we saw one of our major projects being delayed, being put on halt. Also, some of the diamond miners in the region didn't do us any favors, which impacted some of our projects and also the profitability of some of those projects. These headwinds were really compensated by good production numbers coming from East Africa. We have one of our triple X machines being deployed in that region and some good operating numbers coming from our operations in East Africa, which assisted that margin again. If we look at the margin for Africa, it dropped from 25% to 17%. We believe this 17% margin is only temporary.
We expect in the short to medium term to get that bumped up again to that mid-20% range that we're targeting for the region. Down to South Africa, South Africa's revenue contribution dropped from 27% to 23% for the period under review, just over $30 million contributing from South Africa. If you talk about South Africa, you need to look at it in three separate business units. First of all, our raise boring business, then exploration, and then our digital businesses, ANR and AVA. First of all, our raise boring business in South Africa, very good and solid performance for the first half of the year. In this country, we have three of our big triple X machines operating, which had some solid performance and solid production numbers for the first half of the year.
I think the guys are actually set for a record performance this year in South Africa if they keep on going as they're going. On the MDX business, we've seen a good start to the year, although our whole core business in the platinum sector faced some headwinds and some of the equipment moving around. Our MDX business was able to pick up some of the slack and deploy some additional machines, which you'll later see reflecting in the utilization numbers. Finally, on the ANR business, our digital businesses, ANR had a very slow start to the year. This was on the back of two or three of the big capital projects that some of our clients are being postponed or moved out. If you look at the margin for them, a small impact on the margin, but in terms of revenue, they're lagging behind.
We expect a better second half of the year for the ANR business. Overall, the South African margin changed from 19% to 17%. If we look at the rest of the world segment, we can start off with Europe, Europe contributing strongly to the rest of the world segment. We face some headwinds in Spain and Portugal. As we saw, some of the machines that became available for the first half of the year, we were not able to redeploy within the region. Again, some headwinds coming from that region. If you move over to India, solid performance from India and solid margins from the team over there. Down to Australia, the guys are busy with their turnaround plan. Some good improvements in Australia, but we're still getting traction within that region and the contribution from Australia not where it's supposed to be at this stage.
If you look at the margin for the rest of the world, quite a significant drop from 24% to 13% for this period. Revenue by business pillar, always important for us to look at and to monitor. Not much fundamental changes in these graphs. Our raise boring business still consists of about 80% or just over 80% of our business in terms of revenue. The impact that ANR had in our digital businesses for the first half of the year with that slow start, you can clearly see the contribution dropping from 14% to 11%. On a mechanical rock cutting technology site, although the contribution is very small now, we expect that to increase the second half of the year and definitely with Koos and the team to have a bigger contribution come 2026.
Commodity revenue diversification, if you look at the numbers and if you look at the exposure, fairly similar compared to 2024. We have silver, lead, and zinc leading the way there. A really strong contribution coming from our India, Peru, Mexico, and European businesses that really drives that number. We've seen an uptick in copper from 18% to 23%. That is really on the back of those additional machines that we mobilized to Chile and an additional contract here in Africa. If we look at gold and PGM, fairly stable between the two comparative periods. Let's move on to RPOR and utilization. This is always a very important slide to look at and to stand still at. Our utilization currently is at 65%, which is lower compared to 2024.
The good news is that we were able to increase that RPOR all the way from $162,000 at H1 2024 to $186,000 at the end of June this year. Quite a substantial increase on the RPOR side. Let's first start off by looking at the bigger than large raise boring rigs. We added five machines to the raise boring fleet on the bigger end. We can report back that most of those machines were deployed to active contracts and contributing to the revenue of the group. Utilization dropping from 79% to 70%, which is a bit lower than we anticipated. We can comment on that, that the number of our big rigs were actually mobilized or moved between some of our operations, which impacted that utilization number. The good news is we were able to increase that RPOR.
RPOR now sitting at $210,000 for the first time, more than $200,000, with quite a substantial increase. You can really see the big machines coming through the fleet chasing up that number. If you look at the smaller than large raise boring rigs within the fleet, utilization dropped to 53%. That's really a trend that we're seeing throughout the market. As miners and projects require bigger raise boring hull and bigger equipment, this is really a segment for us that we're focusing on and making sure that we can have plans in place to redeploy some of these smaller rigs. Now RPOR quite a substantial increase to $124,000-$125,000 a month on those rigs. Moving down to slim drilling, no machines added to the fleet for the first six months of this year. Utilization increased substantially to 67%. MDX did a good job to redeploy some of the machines.
On the RPOR slide, a slight drop in the RPOR at $59,000. Moving into our order book, our order book sitting at $305 million, which is a touch lower than the beginning of January this year. If you look at our order book for June 2024, we were sitting around $270 million. About a 10%, just over 10% increase period on period. If you look at the order book, we received $104 million of new orders for the year. A lot of orders coming from the regions in Africa and South America specifically. We had some orders that were canceled, some small numbers, and then Forex contributing an additional $5 million to our order book. Awarded orders by commodity, fairly stable comparing 2024 to 2025, the first half of the year.
Some small movements, but we still have again silver, lead, and zinc leading the way with significant order books in Peru, some contribution from India, Mexico, and up in Europe contributing to that. If you look at copper, still stable at 25%. Gold, there's a slight decrease in the gold order book. There's a number of big clients, gold clients that we're negotiating and extending some of our current contracts that will come through in the second half of this year. An increase in the PGMs, that is as expected. In terms of the pipeline, pipeline sitting at $515 million. Some movements up and down in the pipeline, as Danie mentioned earlier, nothing to be concerned about.
If you look at the second half of the year, we already have $133 million of work confirmed, and we pretty much all booked for the second half of the year with quite a busy second half of the year. In conclusion, from my side, I think the teams performed quite well. I expect a busy second half of this year. Our focus should be on the latter part of the year to improve those safety results that we need to work on. Thank you, everyone, and I will hand over to André on the financial side. Thank you.
Thank you, Roelof. Yeah, today is normal, like Danie said. I will take you guys through the financial information. I actually put our presentation in ChatGPT to help me a bit, but it says I'm all on my own today. Today we're going to just start with the key highlights. Then we're going to look at the trends on the HEPS. We're going to look at the revenue trends, the EBITDA trends, and EBITDA margins. Something especially for the South African investors, we're looking at rand terms to look at the growth over the period. We'll look at the balance sheet, income statement, cash flow, impact of the currencies on our results. Also, the main drivers on the revenue for the period. We'll have a quick look at the working capital. That's always quite interesting. We're going to look at the key ratios to show nice improving trends on that.
We'll look at the cash flow movement for the period, and then lastly, we'll look at the capital spend for the period. If we start off with the highlights, I think everybody's mentioned it up to now. We had like a 5% increase in our revenue for the period up to $133 million. Something nice, the net asset value of the business, something that I track quite closely, nearly $1.50 per share. If you convert that to rand at 30 June, that gives you about ZAR 26 per share in NAV. Trading today at a 40% discount to NAV.
Another piece of good information or good news, Koos touched on it, is the reversal of the impairment on the MDB for the project that we're going to start off now at one of the platinum miners, so $4.6 million that we could reverse from the impairment that we've done the previous year. Lastly, the return on capital, something very important for us as a business, up to the 17.5%, beating our WACC by quite a bit of a margin. Some good news there. If we look at the headline earnings per share, quite a good performance, quite stable. One will see in dollar terms up 6.7% and in rand terms only 4.7%. It's actually the first time in quite a long time that the emerging currencies didn't help us a lot on converting it into rand.
We've seen the weakness in the dollar the last bit, and we also foresee that going forward for quite a bit of time. Us as a business, we're ramping up for that. If we look at the EBITDA margins, we're not 100% where we want to. I think we did mention last time our target is 25% on EBITDA margin. We're quite a couple of percentage points away from that, but when we go through the income statement, we'll touch on a couple of points that influence that. Still, a 21% margin on EBITDA. If we look at also quite a nice slide, as I mentioned, especially for the South African investors on the revenue, we're pretty, pretty, if we analyze half-year numbers, close to ZAR 5 billion of revenue. Our EBITDA in rand terms is analyzed again. It's basically ZAR 1 billion.
If we compare that to when we listed, being an ZAR 800 million revenue business, quite a nice growth. On a compounded growth from 2021, we see revenue growing at nearly 18% per annum in rand terms and the EBITDA increasing nearly 16% per year in rand terms. This obviously shows the benefit of hard currency in our business. If we go to the next slide, if we look at the balance sheet, quite a strong performance, quite a good position the business is in. As I mentioned, we had that reversal on the impairment on the PPE. Our current ratio is still at 1.2x, which is quite healthy. I mentioned here working capital days below 100. I think we also always mentioned a target of 100, but we're substantially better than that. We're just over 70 days on working capital. On the gearing, we're dead up at 10%, 10.5%.
A bit up there, but still very, very much within our appetite. If we look at the income statement, we've done a normal one and then the one with the numbers and then a normalized one that we exclude the impairments. I think just we talked about the growth in the revenue that we had, but you'll see quite a big number on the operating other income. That is some forex movements that we had, quite a nice three, I think just over $3 million of forex profit that we had for the year. Again, the benefit of rand and U.S. dollar businesses combined. Then the benefit that we had out of the impairment, the reversal of the impairment. A normalized, yeah, I think this is pretty much aligned with 2024.
We also see the profit before tax, if we analyze that, nearly getting to a $40 million profit before tax business. Quickly moving on to the impact on the currencies. It's actually quite interesting. It's actually the first time since we listed that the revenue in hard currencies are below 50%. If you look at what the feedback Roelof gave of where we've seen growth, we've seen a lot of growth in Chile, where we invoice in local currency. Also in South Africa as well, where we've got the different divisions and especially South African raise boring business doing quite well. Revenue under 50% in a hard currency, but cost pretty, pretty stable between hard and emerging currencies. This position gave us a benefit of $1.3 million on our results, given the mismatch of revenues and cost in the different currencies.
If we go to the next slide, the revenue waterfall, starting off where we were half year last year compared to where we are this year, we'll see the big move there is the addition to the fleet, the capital that we've spent, which is good. The big machines that we placed on contracts, and also we see an increase due to the fleet mix and the utilization. Obviously, utilization was down, but the mix in the fleet and the increase in RPOR giving us that additional $1.5 million. A small contribution from the new acquisition, that's a business in Chile that we did an investment in, also in the industrial product sector. On ANR, like Roelof mentioned, a bit of a slow start to the year, dropping with $3 million on the comparative periods.
Moving on to the working capital, we see a slight increase of $3.4 million on the working capital position. The biggest reason for that was the receivables that pushed out a bit. The good thing about that is 85% of our receivables are still either current or within one month of being past due. We're not worried about the aging of the debtors, but obviously there's a bit of move in the commercial terms with the clients, moving some of the payment terms out. Not worried about that. We also had the benefit of suppliers assisting us to adjust the payment terms to align with what the clients are paying us. Just the increase in the inventory, there's been some projects with quite remote operations, which we needed some additional inventory for those projects.
If we go to the next one, the balance sheet ratios, we've done the results as is and then a normalized. Today, we'll just speak about the normalized. The other one is nice to look at, but obviously it's not sustainable. We look at the normalized numbers. Given that, we've got a return on equity of 12%, which according to our calculation beat our cost of equity by a bit. Going into the right direction. Also, this is a number that will never shoot out the lights, given that we're quite conservative on our gearing. We're not going to gear the balance sheet up to have such a huge return on equity. Return on capital are the numbers that we wanted to be, pretty close.
Still a bit of improvement that we can have, especially if we add that utilization jump to where we wanted to be, but beating our WACC by quite a bit of a margin. Working capital days, as I mentioned, at 71 days and the gearing ratio at 10.5%, we're very comfortable with. If we look quickly at the cash flow waterfall, we'll see we generated about $11 million of cash in this period, a bit lower than what it was before. The reason being a jump in the debtor days, especially. How did we spend the cash? We invested $13 million in capital for the period, and the other big payments have been repayment of our debt and then payment to the shareholders as dividends, which was quite a significant $6 million. If we look at the capital spend for the period, we spent close to $14 million.
Most of it, nearly 60%, has been on maintenance capital. We also include continuous improvement into our equipment. We've done a lot of investment into remote drilling operations, making our machines in a position where we can sit in foothill and operate some of those machines. Quite a bit of investment that went into that as well. Guidance for the second half of the year, we've got just over $3 million that we've committed for capital the rest of the year. Not that much, but obviously things might happen the last half of the year as well. Just to finish off, maybe just on cash, we've got sufficient cash to grow the business for the future. That's all from my side. I'm going to hand back to Danie for just closing and then for some questions.
Thank you, André. Maybe three, four specific focus areas then for the investors to keep an eye on. I think I need to start off by the capital discipline. Andre alluded to that, the gearing up 6%- 10%, something that we need to keep an eye on. More important is how does the capital spend translate to the so-called earnings and growth in the business? Very important to our business. Let me interrupt myself by saying, we're probably going to be naughty with the R&D capital spend. André, you can take that question later on. I'm sure there's going to be a question on that. If we've got a saying here in Fochville, if you want to be in the future, you need to invest in the future.
I think the way the business operates, the investments made today with specific reference to rock cutting, I like to think that's going to change in the next 10 years. There's quite a few very exciting ways, and for the lack of a better word, that's currently being researched and tested worldwide. For today's discussion, please note, we probably need to embark and probably need to invest in some of these so-called technologies, which we call the risk capital. I think that's number two. Number three is the so-called model of the business, the way we do business. We've been seen as a raise boring exploration service provider, and I think the model going forward will probably be very different in the next five years. Let me qualify that by saying, we probably would see more JVs, collaborations, and to be more of an all-inclusive service provider going forward.
Please note, and I'm not necessarily, I'm not saying we will spend this capital to bulk up the business. I think this is the way we're going to set up the business going forward. Maybe the last one is the open pit business. I mentioned that in my previous call some six months ago. Again, something that we need to get more business from. Two important things to share with you. One, I think the advancements made in progress with our MDX business with regards to the grade control. I don't believe that's available and being tested elsewhere in the world. I think really something which the miners are extremely excited about. We had some South American visitors out here last week, and quoting some of those guys, they've never seen the quality of splitting and sampling, which they saw at Makhado mine with one of our rigs.
I think that's one. The second one, which Koos alluded to, was the robotic rigs. I think we're today in a position where we can offer something different. That should probably give us some way to enter the open pit mining industry, which we've really been battling on. Why is it important? I've mentioned before, 70% - 80% of the business or mining today happens to be in an open course. If you look at this so-called green economy, most of those commodities are going to be happening in the open pit space. Hence the reason why it's super important for our business to stay close and to get away into the open pit course mining. That concludes my part of the wrap-up. Willem, you can maybe share with us the Q&A, please?
Good morning, everybody. Thank you for the questions so far. We've got two. The first one is from Matthew from Blue Quadrant, and that one will be addressed to Roelof. I hope you are well. The utilization expected to improve for H2. If so, do you expect RPOR to remain at this high level?
Thank you for that good question. It's something that we monitor very, very closely on a weekly basis within our team. We expect our utilization to slightly increase. If you look at the numbers, we've added quite a lot of machines in the first half of the year. We might add some additional machines. We don't necessarily expect that utilization to go up to the 2024, 2023 levels. Regarding the RPOR, the RPOR for us was a great achievement, and we expect it to hover around those numbers. We don't expect another big jump in the RPOR in the months to come or the year to come. Thank you.
Okay, thanks Roelof. The next question is for André , and it's from Keith from Element Investments. While R&D is exciting to see and necessary for the future, you have not specifically carved out how much you've spent on R&D during this period. How much has been spent on R&D in this period, and what % target of revenue do you expect going forward?
Yeah, thanks Keith. R&D for us, you know, we've got different R&Ds, and why we don't always report it is because most of it is being funded by the clients. We do projects together with them and spend the R&D on that project where they actually compensate us for spending the money. We have a target, a 1.25% of revenue we like to spend on R&D, and that gives us about, it would have been like $2 million for this period. I think we're at $1.9 million that we spent in this period on R&D. I hope that answers your question.
Okay, thank you André . There are currently no more questions. Thank you for everybody that dialed in, and we'll speak again in six months.